FRIDAY, APRIL 29

Mercury-Pleiades conjunction. As the stars come out, look low in the west-northwest for little Mercury close to the Pleiades. They're hardly more than 1° apart. Bring binoculars; even the brightest Pleiades stars are only 3rd and 4th magnitude. Mercury will remain near the Pleiades for the next couple of evenings.

Venus-Jupiter conjunction. Set your alarm to get up early Saturday morning and look low in the southeast about 60 to 45 minutes before your sunrise time. There will be Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest objects after the Sun and Moon, spectacularly close at ½° apart. They'll be lined up more or less horizontally.

Think photo opportunity. Pose them over some interesting foreground. A tripod will help.

And, look off to their upper right for much-fainter Mars and Saturn. Mars is 16° from the bright pair. Saturn is about the same distance farther beyond Mars.

SATURDAY, APRIL 30

■ Face north just after nightfall, look very high, and you'll find the Pointers, the end stars of the Big Dipper's bowl, on the meridian pointing toward Polaris straight down below. From the Pointers to Polaris is about three fists at arm's length.

Whenever the Pointers point straight down, Vega is rising low in the northeast, Leo walks horizontally high across the south, and the Arch of Spring (see tomorrow's entry) fills the high west.

■ In Sunday's early dawn, Venus and Jupiter will be only a trace farther apart than they were this morning, now with Jupiter to Venus's upper right.

■ A partial eclipse of the Sun occurs today for the southeastern Pacific and the southern cone of South America. Details.

■ New Moon (exact at 4:30 p.m. EDT).

SUNDAY, MAY 1

■ Look west-southwest as the stars come out in twilight. There's Orion tilting down in his spring orientation, with his belt horizontal, getting lower every day. The belt points left toward Sirius and right toward Aldebaran and, farther on, Mercury near the Pleiades.

■ Use binoculars for that to help with the Pleiades and with the very thin, one-day old thin crescent Moon down below them! Look very early for the Moon, even before the stars come out; the Moon sets while twilight is still in progress. If you spot it, note the time and find how much time has passed since new Moon, which was at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time April 30th. Is this your youngest-ever young-Moon sighting? Not many people have ever seen a crescent Moon less than 30 hours old, unless they were carefully looking for it.

■ As twilight deepens, look very high above Orion for Pollux and Castor, lined up roughly horizontally. They form the top of the huge Arch of Spring.

Lower left of Pollux and Castor, Procyon marks the Arch's left end.

Look farther to the lower right from Pollux and Castor for 2nd-magnitude Menkalinan (Beta Aurigae) and then brilliant Capella, the Arch's right end.

MONDAY, MAY 2

■ Now the crescent Moon, two days old, is much more easily seen hanging upper left of Mercury as shown below. Mercury has faded to magnitude +0.9, nearly matching Aldebaran father to the Moon's left. But notice that Mercury doesn't twinkle as much.

Crescent Moon with Mercury and the Pleiades, May 2, 2022
In twilight Monday evening the 2nd, the thin crescent Moon aims its round limb diagonally almost toward Mercury and, farther on, the subtler Pleiades. Binoculars help in twilight. (The blue 10° scale is about the width of your fist at arm's length.)

■ Although it's May now, wintry Sirius still twinkles very low in the west-southwest in twilight. It sets soon after. How much longer into the spring can you keep Sirius in view? In other words, what will be its date of "heliacal setting" as seen by you?

The farther south you are, the later this date will be. That's because Sirius is south of the celestial equator. Northerners will have the latest heliacal setting date for Capella in another month or two, since Capella is at a northern declination.

TUESDAY, MAY 3

■ Arcturus is the brightest star high in the east these evenings, shining pale yellow-orange. Look for Spica, paler blue-white, lower right of Arcturus by about three fists at arm's length.

To the right of Spica by half that distance is the distinctive four-star constellation of Corvus, the springtime Crow.

■ Back to Arcturus. It forms the pointy end of the long, narrow Kite asterism formed by the brightest stars of Bootes, the Cowherd. The kite is currently lying on its side to Arcturus's left. The head of the kite, at the far left, is bent slightly upward. The kite is 23° long, about two fist-widths at arm's length.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4

■ The crescent Moon after dark hangs at the trailing foot of the Castor stick-figure. Once again, as it has done every month for a while now, the Moon forms a nearly isosceles triangle with the horn-tip stars of Taurus: Beta and fainter Zeta Tauri. Beta is about 8° lower right of the Moon; Zeta is more directly below the Moon.

THURSDAY, MAY 5

■ These spring evenings, the long, dim sea serpent Hydra snakes far across the southern sky. Find Hydra's head, a rather dim asterism about the width of your thumb at arm's length, in the southwest. It's lower right of Regulus by about two fists at arm's length. Also, a line from Castor through Pollux points to it about 2½ fists away.

Hydra's tail stretches all the way to Libra rising in the southeast. Hydra's star pattern, from forehead to tail-tip, is 95° long. That's more than a quarter of the way around the celestial sphere.

FRIDAY, MAY 6

■ Three zero-magnitude stars shine after dark in May: Arcturus high in the southeast, Vega much lower in the northeast, and Capella in the northwest. They appear so bright because each is at least 60 times as luminous as the Sun, and because they're all relatively nearby: 37, 25, and 42 light-years from us, respectively.

SATURDAY, MAY 7

■ A gigantic asterism you may not know about is the Great Diamond. It stands some 50° tall and extends across five constellations. It's now upright in the southeast to south after dusk.

Start with Spica, its bottom. Upper left from Spica is bright Arcturus. Almost as far upper right from Arcturus is fainter Cor Caroli, 3rd magnitude. The same distance lower right from there is Denebola, the 2nd-magnitude tailtip of Leo. And then back to Spica. Robert H. Baker may have been the first to name the Great Diamond, in his 1954 book When the Stars Come Out.

The bottom three of these stars, the brightest three, form a nearly perfect equilateral triangle. We can call this the "Spring Triangle" to parallel to those of summer and winter. The first to name it such was probably the late Sky & Telescope columnist George Lovi, writing in the March 1974 issue, but it didn't really catch on. So let's try again. (Here's to you, George!)

■ And if you have a dark sky, or binoculars, look halfway from Cor Caroli to Denebola for the very large, sparse Coma Berenices star cluster. It spans some 4°, about the size of a ping-pong ball held at arm's length.

 


This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury peeks through the fading twilight low in the west-northwest, fainter every day! On April 29th and 30th, when it's passing the Pleiades, Mercury is still magnitude +0.4 or +0.5. But as quickly as May 4th it's down to +1.2, only half as bright. 1

Venus and Jupiter, magnitudes –4.1 and –2.1, respectively, are the two "Morning Stars" shining together low in the east-southeast as dawn brightens. On the mornings of April 30th and May 1st, they're passing each other just ½° apart at the times of dawn for the Americas.

Their actual conjunction happens around 19 hours UT April 30th, when the two planets will be ¼° apart. Around that time they will be in dawn view for the western Pacific Rim.

Each morning thereafter, Jupiter moves farther to Venus's upper right.

Mars and Saturn glimmer well to the upper right of Jupiter and Venus. They're vastly fainter, identical now at magnitude +0.9. Mars, however, is more orange than Saturn, which is pale yellow.

Each morning they're a little farther from the Venus-Jupiter pair and from each other. The whole line of four is 33° long on April 30th and lengthens to 41° by May 7th.

"Finally, a decent image of Saturn!" writes imager Christopher Go in the Philippines. "Saturn was only 43° above the horizon but seeing was very good. The belts and zones are very distinct in this image. [Contrast has been boosted.] The emerging southern hemisphere [top] is not very distinct. It is now difficult to make out the north polar hexagon [bottom]." Go images planets using a 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain scope on his apartment balcony.

Uranus is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.

Neptune is in the background of Jupiter, but at magnitude 7.9 it's unobservable in the dawn glow.


All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions and graphics that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time, EDT, is Universal Time minus 4 hours. (Universal Time is also called UT, UTC, GMT or Z time.)


Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations. They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential magazine of astronomy.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Pocket Sky Atlas cover, Jumbo edition
The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown here is the Jumbo Edition, which is in hard covers and enlarged for easier reading outdoors by red flashlight. Sample charts. More about the current editions.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, are the even larger Interstellarum atlas (stars to magnitude 9.5) or Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And be sure to read How to Use a Star Chart with a Telescope. (It applies just as much to charts on your phone or tablet as to charts on paper.)

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook. A beloved old classic is the three-volume Burnham's Celestial Handbook. An impressive more modern one is the big Night Sky Observer's Guide set (2+ volumes) by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically, meaning heavy and expensive. And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."


Audio sky tour. Out under the evening sky with your
earbuds in place, listen to Kelly Beatty's monthly
podcast tour of the heavens above. It's free.



"The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking, it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before."
            — Carl Sagan, 1996

"Facts are stubborn things."
             John Adams, 1770


 

1 . Okay, you've asked how we do that. Why does Mercury fading 0.75 magnitude mean it fades by half? How do you convert a magnitude difference to a brightness difference?

Since 1856, the stellar magnitude system has been precisely defined so that 5 magnitudes is exactly a 100-times difference in brightness. So, one magnitude is a change in brightness of the fifth root of 100. Which is 2.512 for all practical purposes.

Here's the formula to use: If △m is the magnitude difference, then

brightness difference = 2.512m

...which is just a few taps on your scientific calculator.

Some amateurs learn the basic magnitude intervals by heart:

Table of magnitude difference vs. brightness difference

Comments


Image of Rod

Rod

April 29, 2022 at 6:23 am

I was able to see Venus and Jupiter this morning using my telescope. Stellarium shows 79 arcminute angular separation between them. At 25x, my view was 108 arcminutes. Venus half-moon shape and Jupiter planetary disk shape apparent. Clear skies, temperature 1C, winds calm. Interesting conjunction underway in the early morning skies. I observed 0545-0600 EDT. Stellarium 0.22.1 shows Jupiter 34.70 arcsecond size, Venus 16.91 arcsecond size and 67% illuminated. Perhaps tomorrow morning I can see both planets at 71x views with more detail. They should be just near 0.5-degree angular separation or 30 arcminute. The 90-mm refractor telescope view is north up, mirror reverse so Venus was on the left side, Jupiter on the right side. Someone may get a good photo of the two paring up now in the early morning sky.

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Rod

April 30, 2022 at 7:36 am

Venus and Jupiter dazzling this morning. [Observed 0520-0625 EDT/0920-1025 UT. Sunrise 0611 EDT/1011 UT. Spectacular dazzling duo of Venus and Jupiter in Pisces this morning – WoW! Venus 67.42% illuminated; Jupiter 99.53% illuminated. Stellarium 0.22.1 angle mode shows separated by just less than 30 arcminutes (29 arcminute, 47 arcsecond at 0545 EDT). By 0605 EDT and shortly after, the 3 Galilean moons visible in the telescope view faded as the sky brightened approaching sunrise. At 0621 EDT, I could see the Sun ascending in its glory behind a distant tree line, Venus visible naked eye. In the telescope view, Venus gibbous shape and Jupiter planetary disk visible still. Earlier at Jupiter I could see the two main cloud belts (NEB and SEB) and 3 Galilean moons visible (Ganymede, Io, and Callisto). I used my 90-mm refractor telescope with Orion Sirius 25-mm plossl for 40x views. True FOV ~ 78 arcminutes, resolution ~ 7.5 arcsecond. Venus disk size ~ 17 arcsecond, Jupiter ~ 35 arcsecond. Good observing location at my neighbor’s 50-acre horse and hay farm standing in a large field. Great horn owls were in the woods hooting, I hooted back. We had a hoot of a time Skies clear, some thin cirrus scattered that did not cause problems, temperature 4C, winds north/4 knots. At 0520 EDT, Venus and Jupiter were the Wow view, dazzling duo, forget about Mars and Saturn Venus apparent magnitude -4.11, Jupiter -2.11, Venus about 6.3x brighter than Jupiter.]

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Rod

May 1, 2022 at 6:17 am

I was able to view with naked eye this morning, the dazzling duo. Venus is lower left now of Jupiter moving quickly by Jupiter's position in Pisces. This was about 0530 EDT. More clouds over my area this morning and temperature 8C. Stellarium 0.22.1 angle mode shows a bit more than 33 arcminute angular separation between Venus and Jupiter this morning. Sunrise at my site near 0609 EDT.

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Rod

May 1, 2022 at 7:18 am

FYI folks. I tracked Venus position changes relative to Jupiter since 27-April early morning. Then it was near the 2:30 position of Jupiter or upper right, just a bit more than 3-degrees angular separation. From my log notes on the 27-April. [Some 10x50 binocular viewing of Venus and Jupiter, closing fast now in the morning sky today. This morning near 0610 EDT I was able to view Venus and Jupiter in 10x50 binocular views. Temperature 8C, lovely early spring morning sky. Sunrise 0614 EDT. Venus and Jupiter are closing fast now in the morning sky. Venus and Jupiter separated by a bit more than 3-degrees today."

Dramatic changes to Venus position in the sky relative to Jupiter from 27-April thru 01-May. Cool to watch 🙂

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Image of Martian-Bachelor

Martian-Bachelor

May 1, 2022 at 11:26 am

> Venus-Jupiter conjunction... Think photo opportunity.

My result: http://VISNS.NeoCities.org/VenusJupiter.htm

With all the wildfire smoke around out here in the West I was pleasantly surprised I was able to get much of anything.

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Rod

May 1, 2022 at 11:50 am

Very good Martian-Bachelor, thanks for sharing. I used Stellarium 0.22.1 and Starry Night Pro Plus 8 to identify the 3 Galilean moons visible in my telescope view on 30-April post.

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Rod

May 2, 2022 at 6:04 am

Okay, another naked eye observation of Venus zipping by Jupiter this morning at 0555 EDT/0955 UT. Sunrise 0608 EDT. Venus is in lower left or near 7:30 position of Jupiter separated by about 1 degree, 26 arcminute or so according to Stellarium/Starry Night. It is fun seeing Venus zip past Jupiter in Pisces. Now I understand I am on a flat earth that does not move 🙂

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